The small town of Saint-Germain-Laprade has many assets. Along the RN 88, the development of its area of activity for more than 30 years has enabled it to create a pool of jobs. At the same time, the very large city wants to maintain the image of a green city. “We are a commune rich in its inhabitants, spread over 25 villages and we intend to keep our character, while retaining our factories, our farmers. We must keep this balance,” summarizes Mayor Guy Chapelle.
It is in this context, with budgets increasingly difficult to balance, that Saint-Germain-Laprade developed the acceleration zone project for the production of renewable energies (Zapenr).
“We have to move towards renewable energies. Here, due to the configuration of our territory, there will be no wind project. But we have the possibility of developing photovoltaics,” continues the chief magistrate. A very real potential with car parks, roofs and land unusable for agriculture, which are all possible avenues for installing photovoltaic panels. The municipality also had a methanization project, “but it is not ripe”.
A positive energy municipality: producing more electricity than it consumes
The idea, with Zapenr, is to “decarbonize our electricity production. The objective is to make Saint-Germain-Laprade a positive energy municipality. That is to say a municipality where we produce more electricity than we consume,” explains Guy Chapelle.
-To achieve this, the equation to solve is relatively simple. According to figures provided by Enedis (2022 data), Saint-Germain consumes around 40.9 GWh of electricity each year. It produces 1.3 GWh. So how do we find the remaining 39.6? “We plan to install photovoltaic shades in the parking lot of the sports complex,” explains the mayor.
5,500 m2 of shade in the complex parking lot
According to a first study carried out, “this would represent around 5,500 m2 of photovoltaic panels for an annual production of around 1.2 GWh”, indicates the mayor. In spirit, this type of shade (this will become a legal obligation for outdoor parking lots of more than 500 m²) would resemble those which equip the parking lot of the supermarket located in Chirel in Vals-près-le-Puy.
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